CHAPTER II. FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF IMPENDING CONFLICT, 1860-61.

     "Many persons in the United States talk of a dissolution of 
     the Union, but few believe in it.... All this is mere bravado 
     and empty talk. It means nothing. The Union is dear to all 
     Americans, whatever they may say to the contrary.... There is 
     no present danger to the Union, and the violent expressions 
     to which over-ardent politicians of the North and South 
     sometimes give vent have no real meaning. The 'Great West,' 
     as it is fondly called, is in the position even now to 
     arbitrate between North and South, should the quarrel stretch 
     beyond words, or should anti-slavery or any other question 
     succeed in throwing any difference between them which it 
     would take revolvers and rifles rather than speeches and 
     votes to put an end to[33]."

The slavery controversy in America had, in short, come to be regarded in England as a constant quarrel between North and South, but of no immediate danger to the Union. Each outbreak of violent American controversy produced a British comment sympathetic with the North. The turmoil preceding and following the election of Lincoln in 1860, on the platform of "no extension of slavery," was very generally noted by the British press and public, as a sign favourable to the cause of anti-slavery, but with no understanding that Southern threat would at last be realized in definite action. Herbert Spencer, in a letter of May 15, 1862, to his American friend, Yeomans, wrote, "As far as I had the means of judging, the feeling here was at first very decidedly on the side of the North[34] ..." The British metropolitan press, in nearly every issue of which for at least two years after December, 1860, there appeared news items and editorial comment on the American crisis, was at first nearly unanimous in condemning the South[35]. TheTimes, with accustomed vigour, led the field. On November 21, 1860, it stated: